Shipped: Mobile Web Testing

Today we announce General Availability of our first mobile platform: Android! All customers will be able to run tests on devices running the Android Browser.

Your tests will run on a virtualized Android device, running a real Android operating system. We created four new device types that may be selected when creating test runs: Android Phone and Android Tablet, both with landscape (horizontal) and portrait (vertical) variants.

Due to its popularity, we decided to make the stock Android browser our workhorse this launch. Since Android 4.4, the engine used by the Android Browser is based on Chromium, the same modern engine also used by Chrome.

As our first non-PC platform, there were a number of challenges. We decided early on that we wanted to provide users with a real Android operating system, and not an emulated or simulated browser.

There are an incredible variety of Android devices – particularly when it comes to screen sizes and resolutions. At launch we support the two most popular devices that support Android – a tablet and a phone.

Mobile devices also have a different UI – you can drag web pages, there is no mouse pointer, and certain elements like scrollbars and the address bar fade out of view. We have invested in tester training to ensure that our testers can effectively test a mobile UI.

For now, there are some limitations to our Android environment: there is no camera, or hardware GPS device. Also, there is no accelerometer – so the screen can’t be flipped once a test has been started.

We are looking forward to adding more features in the future, along with support for other mobile browsers, we’re planning to add the ability to support other device resolutions, as well as mobile app testing.